[HPforGrownups] FAT

[Meredith Wilson]

No: HPFGUIDX 20292

>"I love the Harry Potter books too. 
>But anyway, something that really bugs me about the books is her depiction 
>of obesity and her equating it with sloth, greed, and narrow-mindedness 
>(her depiction of Harry's cousin). I think that continues to promote 
>intolerance and mistreatment based on weight. I feel these wildly popular 
>books will not do much for kids who are bullied and ostracized based on 
>weight.
>On the who's who in Harry Potter website, notice the description of Dudley:
>"Dudley Dursley: Harry's chubby, spoiled and bratty cousin, also a Muggle."
>I bet nine of out ten kids would start with a description of Dudley's 
>weight as his defining characteristic."

I'm often torn here.  I do a fair bit of size activism, and I'm usually very
aware of size-ist actions (as a larger girl myself) and while part of me
says 'it's just a way to show his selfish, gluttonous character traits' but
then again, kids don't need many excuses to see 'Dudley is gluttonous and
selfish and so he's fat.  Johnny is fat, too, so he must be selfish and
gluttonous, I bet he's a bad person, like Dudley.'  Kids are mean enough
about little things, and as a kid who people made barnyard noises to (even
though I was barely chubby as a kid, now that I look back) and our society
is extremely bad about saying 'because you're fat it must mean you're lazy
or not trying hard enough or following enough fad diets to lose weight'
instead of saying 'it's not easy to be fat in our society, I don't know why
anyone would choose to be fat, so there must be a medical reason somewhere
for it,' or something along those lines.  I don't think Molly or Hagrid can
really be used as positive larger characters.  Hagrid isn't 'fat,' he's just
a big guy all over, same with Madame Maxime, and they don't really mention
Molly as 'fat' either.  Regardless, with kids, they're looking at the kid
characters.  Grown-ups get more respect as large people from kids than other
kids who are fat do.  There aren't _any_ fat kids except Dudley.  That's my
beef.  To say Dudley is gluttonous and selfish and fat wouldn't be as big a
deal if there was at least one other 'good' kid is fat.  It's a comparison
between 'bad' fat, slow, obnoxious Dudley, who can't even buy clothes to fit
him (and let me tell you, you have to be extremely large for this to be the
case, and even with his gluttony it would be hard for a 13 year old to
achieve this) and 'good' thin, quick, charming Harry, who fights evil, is
the fast seeker and everyone loves him.  It's a pretty extreme comparison
for kids to see and say 'thin is fast and good and everyone loves Harry,
while fat is slow and bad and everyone hates Dudley.'  

I know that's simplifying and believe me, I don't tend to fly off the handle
about such things, but it does bug me on some levels.  Obviously not enough
to discount the books, as I'm as obsessed as the best of them (I wear a
lightning bolt pin on the lapel of my Hogwarts jean jacket with my golden
snitch necklace proudly). Just thought I'd put in my 2 knuts worth on a
subject close to me.

Meredith